The power of diverse stories and the future of the web - gifted by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
I’m a producer, videojournalist at Channel 4 News, arguably one of the best news progs on British TV.
They hadn’t intended on covering a story I felt so passionate about, so I boarded a plane to South Africa ( a place I knew well) and reworked a storyline from five years earlier. Who are the successor generation of South Africa — young people five years into the country’s fledgling democracy.
It’s 1999. I won’t make any money from the film. Flight and the hiring of the £50,000 camera, and editing means I’ll barely break even. But the story then was important and I have the opportunity to make it.
By then I already had an idea of what the Net could do, and would be making further international stories after I left Channel 4 which, with several contributors, would be distributed on the web and www.viewmagazine.tv platform.
The web was a place to meet, share, respect, and grow. But that was to take a turning in the first decade of 2000 when an alternative mendacious mood took hold. Disinformation, the corrosion of the development of diverse stories, cyber bulling and misinformation. We’re riding that wave now.
But a new fourth web looms. The creator of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee has framed what’s required to escape from a trend that sees capitalism over caring, division over diversity, and harnessing personal data over harbouring humility and privacy.
It’ll require collective associations. In story terms a return to a web of the 90s early 2000s provides for a more humanitarian co-existent. There’s a LinkedIn question doing the rounds, asking what’s the point of diverse stories? Simply they promote understanding.
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It’ll hit the industry. It’ll facilitate the “if you think it, you can be it”, but will it allow for a widening of storytelling and sense of their diversity. The web will look a different space in less than a decade. It’s shaping is taking form now. Question is whether you’re a participant or seek to act in concert with others to make it safe space. I’ll be presenting at the forthcoming Storytellers & Machines next month to share research and tech solutions.
